Public Health Archives - Page 6 of 7

Democracy

#Orbanistan

Democracy in lockdown

April 7, 2020 • by Kriszta Kovács

A month later, a subsequent “Enabling Act” allowed the new German government led by Adolf Hitler to issue decrees independently of both Parliament and the President. In effect, it turned Hitler into a dictator. On 23 March 2020, the Hungarian Parliament debated a piece of legislation so similarly sweeping that some Hungarians informally now call it ...

Climate & Ecology

Enduring the Chernobyl Disaster

An interview with Kate Brown

April 7, 2020 • by Damian Roos and Kate Brown

Damien Roos [DR]: This is your second book centered on the topic of nuclear energy. Did you set out with a suspicion that the impact of the Chernobyl disaster had been underreported? Kate Brown [KB]: I did, yes. In some ways, this book is a sequel to this first book I ...

Migration

Essential Services

The Unique, Unadressed Plight of Undocumented Immigrants in the COVID Crisis

April 7, 2020 • by José Ángel Navejas

What makes the current crisis familiar is the sense of foreboding, of knowing oneself disposable at any moment. What makes it contradictory is the impossibility of staying put. For most of us, staying home is as unnatural as it is illogical. A violation of our faith in universal principles. If ...

History

COVID-19: When History Has No Lessons

Facing a crisis without precedent

April 6, 2020 • by Gaëtan Thomas and Guillaume Lachenal

“With such a timely specialization, why aren’t you on CNN right now?,” asked a well-meaning individual at a gathering over drinks a few weeks ago, as the conversation inevitably turned to the coronavirus, which still seemed like a far away phenomenon. “What does the historian of medicine think of all ...

Democracy

Blaming Trump, Blaming Biden, Saving Ourselves

Can we save ourselves, from the plague that is COVID or the plague that is Trump?

April 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This shouldn’t be a controversial point. Everyone from presumptive Democratic nominee former vice president Joe Biden to prominent columnists like Michelle Goldberg believes it. But it’s proved harder to do than it would seem. Even as Trump lies, promotes unproven cures, and continues to carry out petty personal vendettas at the expense of saving lives, ...

Blaming Trump, Blaming Biden, Saving Ourselves

Economy

The COVID-19 Crisis Demands Bold, Progressive Economic Ideas

A Call for Papers

April 2, 2020 • by Teresa Ghilarducci, Richard McGahey and Paulo L. dos Santos

This pandemic poses a series of unprecedented economic challenges. It compromises our ability to engage in productive and commercial activities that require close contact between groups of people. Because fighting the disease requires non-essential workers to stay at home, it threatens to trigger a catastrophic recession, if not depression, as entire ...

The COVID-19 Crisis Demands Bold, Progressive Economic Ideas

Labor

Will the US Pandemic Response Strengthen Workers?

Worker protections and collective bargaining must be part of any economic recovery plan

March 30, 2020 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

But this rare moment of bipartisanship will turn out to have been a missed opportunity if it does not also reverse the long decline of worker protections and collective-bargaining power in the United States. As Lawrence H. Summers of Harvard University and many others have shown, this trend has contributed significantly to the ...

Will the US Pandemic Response Strengthen Workers?

Democracy

There’s No “Trade-Off” Between Saving Lives and Saving the Economy

A humane society doesn’t trade some lives for others

March 28, 2020 • by Peter Dreier

Nonsense. In February, when he had a chance to take decisive action to get ahead of the virus, Trump told his advisors not to “do or say anything that would further spook the markets.” Trump’s weeks of downplaying the crisis, and his failure to prepare for the looming pandemic, deepened the problem. But having finally acknowledged the ...

There’s No “Trade-Off” Between Saving Lives and Saving the Economy

Public Health

It’s Time to Rethink Healthcare as a Human Right

COVID-19 has put an urgent campaign agenda at the top of the policy list

March 24, 2020 • by Katie Scofield

Former Vice President Joe Biden focused on what a president could do here and now to control the outbreak. Sen Bernie Sanders called to systematically rethink American healthcare. Sanders rightly pointed out that the outcomes and effects of COVID-19 will be exacerbated by existing problems in the healthcare industry. If people ...

It’s Time to Rethink Healthcare as a Human Right

History

Yes, COVID-19 Is an Emergency: It’s Also a Paradigm Shift

This new challenge must include a demand for justice

March 24, 2020 • by Ian Zuckerman

I believe the answer is yes, in the immediate sense of what must be done. But it’s too early to tell, in the longer sense of whether our aim must be to return to the status quo ante, or undergo more permanent transformations. Either way, the legitimate, temporary suspension of ...

Yes, COVID-19 Is an Emergency: It’s Also a Paradigm Shift

Public Health

How to Slow the Bleeding

Important action in a coronavirus-infected economy

March 19, 2020 • by James Parrott

On Tuesday, the White House announced its support for a large economic stimulus package. That’s certainly needed, but let’s keep the focus where it should be: to head off the epidemic of necessary job loss and business closings before it becomes an economic contagion. Elected officials have asked businesses and workers ...

Activism

From Mad Cows to Coronavirus

When Government Fails, Grassroots Activism Flourishes

March 17, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

This was bad enough; but in March 1996, Britain’s secretary of state for health announced ten cases of something similar in another species: a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) had been diagnosed in human patients. CJD is a fatal disease caused by a rampant protein that eats away the brain cells ...